→ July 15, 2013
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The Ministry of Fear.

My quick reactions post to the Futures Game went up last night for Insiders.

I’m a huge fan of Graham Greene’s works, having read more novels by him than any other writer not named Wodehouse or Christie. Greene is probably best remembered today for his “Catholic novels” – a group that includes The End of the Affair, The Heart of the Matter, and my favorite of them, The Power and the Glory – and if you look for his works in any bookstore, independent or big-box, that’s mostly what you’ll find. Yet Greene also produced suspense novels he derided as “entertainments,” mostly spy novels, which varied from straight-ahead intrigues (The Confidential Agent) to parodic works with serious themes below the humor (Our Man in Havana, which is on the Klaw 100).

The Ministry of Fear is one of Greene’s entertainments, a serious spy novel that revolves around a bit of mistaken identity to delve into existential questions of identity and memory and the morality of crime and murder in wartime. It is tremendously entertaining, with an everyman protagonist who becomes a hunted man when he inadvertently wins a cake intended for an actual spy at a local fair, and well-paced, while avoiding the sense of empty calories you might find in a more formulaic, pulp-fiction spy story.

Arthur Rowe is a bit of a sad-sack widower who enters a fortune-teller’s tent at that local fair, a brief decision that lands him the cake and a significant amount of trouble, especially when he refuses to give or sell the cake to its intended recipient. This coincidence puts Arthur on the run after an attempt on his life and a frame-up for a crime committed with his own schoolboy’s knife, bringing him into conflict with a past of his own that he’s trying to escape, even as his mind refuses to give him freedom.

A good spy or suspense novel needs its share of twists, and Greene gives us several, most of which I haven’t mentioned here to avoid spoilers. There are at least five major plot points that might count as surprises, although I thought the denouement was rather predictable given what came before – mostly that we run out of culprits, but also because the genre teaches us to look for the most shocking answer to the novel’s main question. Greene sustains The Ministry of Fear in spite of that one foreseeable outcome because of the depth of his characterization of Rowe, a more complex man under the surface than Greene’s initial presentation of him would indicate. Rowe is emotionally exhausted, looking for closure, careening from moments of great inner strength to severe defeatism. He can be clueless, but in crises shows quicker resolve and remarkable deductive reasoning skills. He’s full of pity, but is not as pathetic as he’d seem, even flashing a cold streak when that will get him what he wants or needs. He’s neither hero nor antihero, a protagonist whom the reader wants to ‘win’ but whose terms of victory are not quite what we’d want for him.

The Ministry of Fear can’t succeed as a spy novel unless it gets the “spy” part right, and I believe that it does so with a plot that moves quickly with sufficient narrative greed to pull the reader forward, as well as enough twists and turns to keep the suspense level high (until that one climactic twist). It works as a novel because Greene was almost completely incapable of writing a novel, even an unserious one, without creating at least one strong character, while using the same voice and phrasing that made him a master of English fiction.

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In between the last blog post and this one, I read three classics from the Bloomsbury 100 list: Guy de Maupassant’s Bel Ami, Miles Franklin’s My Brilliant Career, and Robert Louis Stevenson’s novella The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde. None seemed worth a full post; Franklin’s book was the most interesting, a very early work of feminist literature where the young protagonist chafes under the societal restrictions that prevent her from receiving the same education or opportunities as men her age. Written when Franklin was just 21, the book describes the efforts of her stand-in main character to develop her independence when her fate is determined by others around her, nearly all of them male. She has but one decision she can make for herself, and makes it even if the world around her would view it as foolish.

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Next up: Herman Koch’s 2013 novel The Dinner.

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→ April 6, 2012
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A Very Private Gentleman.

The never-named narrator of A Very Private Gentleman – known to his neighbors as “Signor Farfalla” because they believe him to be a painter of butterflies – is in fact a high-end gunsmith, forging custom weapons for assassins whose targets have included world leaders and wealthy businessmen. He’s chatty, prone to long digressions on his craft, his philosophy of life, his politics, and why we shouldn’t view him as a mere accessory to murder, but when he realizes he’s been spotted and is being followed by a man with unknown intentions he’s forced to reconsider his plans to retire in this Italian village with his call girl/lover Clara.

That part of the book, covering the final quarter, is as gripping as any passage I’ve come across in fiction, very tightly written, but also accelerating the pace of the narrator’s revelations about his own character, constantly shifting the reader’s impressions of his morality and his motivations. He begins pursuing his pursuer, and employing many of the tricks of his trade he discussed earlier in the novel, and the way Booth has set up the big finish there’s no expectation of any specific outcome – any of the central characters could die, and it’s not even clear who’s pursuing the narrator or why until the very end of the book.

The suspenseful payoff made up for a pretty slow first half of the book, where the narrator is so busy trying to tell us about his philosophy – or, perhaps, to impress us with his intelligence while rationalizing his choice of professions – that we get little more than stage-setting. There’s no suspense other than the suspense you get from reading a novel that you know has some suspense in it but that you have yet to encounter within the book itself. It was slow enough that I wasn’t sure I wanted to finish the book, even though it pains me to put down a book I’ve already started; obviously now I’m glad I stuck it out, but I don’t remember another book with that much lead-up to the Big Finish.

You could, however, read the book as a character study, although that’s a genre I seem to prefer in films over books. The narrator is complex, and fully capable of deluding himself, which could make him, in turn, somewhat unreliable (although we never receive hard evidence that he is). His lengthy tangents on the nature of his job, specifically whether it’s immoral or amoral, expose all kinds of rationalizations designed, I imagine, to help him sleep at night. He’s a man without faith but strikes up a friendship with the priest in the Italian village where he’s working on his One Last Job before retiring, and that priest is the one person who learns something of the narrator’s personality and reasons for secrecy, leading to more probing questions about the narrator’s state of mind. I found the narrator’s thoughts on speaking about religion particularly interesting, since I have avoided discussing religion (and, for that matter, most political subjects) in any forum because it’s like licking the third rail:

I have respect for the religions of others; after all, I have worked for the cause of several – Islam, Christianity, Communism. I have no intention of insulting or demeaning the beliefs of my fellow man. Nothing can be gained thereby save controversy and the dubious satisfaction of insult.

I suppose the Internet would lose about half its volume if everyone followed that dictum.

The problem I had with the novel as a character study is that it’s plodding. You want something to move the story along, but looking backward from the end of the book it’s clear that nothing happened until the Big Finish; the most interesting passages were flashbacks to previous jobs, including two that went awry. But that finish was a heart-pounder, and once the hunt begins in earnest, it’s impossible to put down: Now you know something is about to happen, and therein lies the fear.

The novel was adapted for the big screen and titled The American, starring George Clooney as the narrator (whose nationality is never identified in the book), but with substantial changes to the plot. I understand the reviews were solid, but I have a strong aversion to films that drastically alter their source works without good reason (“the book sucked” being one such reason).

Next up: James Joyce’s Dubliners. Agenbite of inwit, indeed.

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→ September 22, 2010
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Boardwalk Empire and The Constant Gardener.

Two topics in one post, just because. You probably saw my post on why the pitcher win stat must die. Klawchat on Thursday.

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Finally got around to the first episode of HBO’s Boardwalk Empire last night , and I think my expectations were so high that I was bound to be a little disappointed, even though there’s a lot to like. The Prohibition Era/Roaring Twenties is my favorite period in U.S. history, in literature, film, or even non-fiction, so this series is tailor-made for me. Everything looks spectacular (outside of a couple of weak special effects), both the sets and the costumes, and Steve Buscemi really grew into the role as Atlantic City boss Nucky Thompson over the course of that one episode after a weak beginning with his speech to the Temperance League. Jimmy Darmody, (played by Michael Pitt), Nucky’s driver, has a chance to be an even more compelling character as a bright, young, ambitious kid whose moral compass has been warped or smashed by his experiences in Germany in World War I. Eddie, Nucky’s butler, was excellent as a sort of anti-Jeeves, although the role doesn’t offer much substance. And Paz de la Huerta … well, her character (Lucy) is mostly just comic relief, but if she’s naked a lot I won’t complain.

That first episode had plenty of cliches, though, starting with de la Huerta’s dim-witted showgirl/gangster moll. The other major female character, the abused, immigrant wife Margaret Schroder, comes with a back story we’ve seen a million times – beaten and subjugated by a jealous, alcoholic husband, who eventually gets his compuppance at Nucky’s hands, satisfying the viewer’s desire for vengeance but avoiding the harsh reality that domestic violence wasn’t seen the way we view it today. I can’t speak to the historical accuracy of the portrayals, but did notice that they made the Italian guy (Luciano) the loose cannon with the bad temper and the Jewish guy (Rothstein) the money-obsessed guy who cheats in his business dealings, both of which felt like unfortunate stereotyping. The editing style, particularly the montage sequence at the end, involved so many jump cuts that I had a hard time following the multiple strands, and the final murder in the episode lacked any context whatsoever. The main antagonist to Johnson, other than Rothstein, is Agent Van Alden, rocking a Dick Tracy jaw line but lacking any kind of back story to explain his zeal for stamping out alcohol (there are hints at a religious objection, but religious faith alone isn’t much of an explanation for Van Alden’s determination or steely expressions).

Buscemi and Pitt alone are reasons enough to continue watching, and the series is one of the only ones I’ve ever seen where the visual appeal would make me tune in anyway, but I am hopeful that this episode is the one where they worked out the kinks, setting up some stronger storylines and better characterizations for the rest of the season.

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If you’ve set your mind on hiding the truth, then the first thing you’ve got to do is give people a different truth to keep them quiet.

I’ve been slacking on my reading during the moving/unpacking process but did knock out John Le Carré’s The Constant Gardener last week. A suspense novel involving spies that is less a spy novel than an angry novel of social criticism, it elevates a straightforward story of a widower’s quest to identify his wife’s murderers into a morally important work that is seldom preachy or strident without cause.

The superficial plot is that of the murder of Tessa Quayle and her research/activist partner Arnold Bluhm; their bodies are discovered in the first chapter, and the next hundred pages or so deal with the mundane nature of the death of the wife of a foreign service official – from the funeral to the investigation to the “handling” of the widower. It’s a slow beginning, but gradually builds enough of the case to set Justin off on the track that leads to the ultimate plot, the role in those murders of the multinational pharmaceutical corporations behind a supposed miracle TB drug called Dypraxa, whose side effects have apparently been ignored as it’s being given to poor Kenyans dying of the disease.

Le Carré still plays to his strengths as a spy novelist by sending Justin off on a run around the world, three continents and at least five countries, fleeing both his former employers and whoever killed his wife. Justin’s titular interest in gardening only plays a small role in defining his character, but le Carré does add some complexity through hints that Justin’s mind may be either going or playing tricks on him, a point of view pushed hard by the British foreign service, who appear to be operating in the pay of those same pharmaceutical companies who may have killed Kenyans through their drug trials and hushed it up. Through Justin’s investigation, which brings him into contact with all of the remaining major players in the drug’s development and early trials, le Carré offers the pharmaceutical companies’ points of view – particularly that they gave the drug to people who were likely to die of the disease anyway – but clearly has little sympathy for it; there’s a righteous anger bubbling just under the surface of The Constant Gardener that wouldn’t work if he was advocating a more controversial point of view, but given the existence of a similar incident that may have inspired this book, it’s hard to take the contrary position. The novel doesn’t have the same tension or psychological emphasis as Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy or The Spy Who Came in from the Cold, but the author’s obvious rage at what he views as abuses of supra-national corporations takes their place to drive the book forward towards its inevitable, tragic conclusion.

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